In the Heart of the Canyon (11 page)

“Poor Lena.”

“Poor JT, you mean! One of these days he’s going to haul off and slug the guy” Jill drained the mug and handed it back to Susan, who refilled it.

“So is Amy your only?” Jill asked.

“She is.”

There was a silence, during which the Mother Bitch rustled her leaves in the bushes.
What she really wants to ask is how come Amy’s so fat, when you’re so thin
.

“How nice, to have a girl,” Jill said wistfully. “I always wanted a girl. One of each. I love my boys, of course,” she added hastily.

“Would you have any more children?”

Jill hooted. “Not possible. When Sam was born, I had my tubes tied. I’m lying there all cut open, and the doctor’s head pops up between
my legs and he goes, ‘Tubes?’ and I go, ‘Yes, please!’ Easiest decision I ever made. Mark doesn’t know,” she added.

For some reason, this did not shock Susan.

“He assumes I’m on the Pill,” Jill went on. “I’m saving a fortune on birth control. This is very good wine, you know! I think I’m kind of feeling it.”

Susan was feeling it too. She thought that Jill had revealed an awful lot of herself in the last ten minutes and that she, Susan, ought to reveal equivalent intimacies. But she didn’t know where to start. It suddenly occurred to her that maybe it wasn’t just Amy who was responsible for keeping them so distant from one another.

Right then Evelyn passed behind them on her way downriver.

“Evelyn,” Susan called over her shoulder, “do you want some wine?”

Evelyn smiled cheerfully. “No thanks! Off for a little walk right now!” She kept heading downstream. When she found a rock that was large enough to hide behind, she squatted.

“She’s an odd duck,” remarked Jill.

They both watched as Evelyn hitched up her shorts, moved downstream, and squatted again.

“Think she’s a virgin?” asked Jill.

Susan turned to stare directly at this upstanding citizen of the suburbs of Salt Lake City. Then she burst out laughing. “Give her credit,” she said. “I heard her mention some man back in Boston. But they broke up.”

“That explains it. She needs to get laid.”

I need to get laid, thought Susan. Amy needs to get laid. We all need to get laid.

“Speaking of which,” said Jill, “who do you think’s hotter—JT or Abo?”

Susan didn’t have to think about it. “Abo. Something about that bleachy-tipped hair.”

“I’d say Abo too, except he’s got a beer gut. Look at his belly when he’s bending over.”

“So JT, is that what you’re saying?”

Jill didn’t answer. She lay back on the sand and closed her eyes. “I wish I were twenty-one,” she said. “I’d live on the river and fuck a lot of river guides.”

Susan chuckled.

“Do
not
repeat that,” said Jill.

I
t took Evelyn three squats, three separate boulders, and three hundred feet of shoreline before she could finally pee.

The first rock sheltered her from view of the camp but not from Jill and Susan. Unable to relax, Evelyn pulled up her shorts and hiked farther downstream to the next big rock, where she squatted again—only to glance up and notice that Peter had set up his campsite in a cluster of bushes that put her directly in his line of view. Evelyn traipsed on and finally came upon a slab of rock that offered full protection. And there in its shadow, up to her ankles in the icy water, she dropped her shorts and squatted and finally released the liter of water that she’d been holding since lunchtime.

Exhausted from the discomfort, she remained in squat position, staring numbly ahead. She hadn’t expected to have this problem—who would?—but it had descended upon her the first day, when they pulled onto shore for a quick pit stop. “Skirts up, pants down,” Dixie had joked, indicating that the women were to go upstream from the boat, while the men were to go downstream. The problem was, there
was
no upstream; it was blocked off by a steep wall of rock, leaving only a tiny cove beside the boat for the three women. Dixie and Ruth quickly went, but Evelyn couldn’t. Maybe it was the lack of privacy; maybe it was the time pressure. She tried focusing on the sound of the river (that old trick!), but it didn’t work. Finally, convinced that she was delaying the group, she climbed back in the boat, telling herself it wouldn’t be too long before they made camp, where there would presumably be a little more privacy.

Which there had been, but the problem presented itself on Day
Two and Day Three: the same setup, only now with the memory of yesterday’s failure adding to her tension. As the day went on, she watched the men casually relieve themselves over the side of the boat, while the women either jumped into the water and floated along with glazed eyes or, as Dixie demonstrated, simply hung their backsides over the edge of the boat. Evelyn couldn’t do either. Every single time, she had to wait until they were on shore; not only that, but instead of feeling
more
comfortable with the group as the days went on, she felt
less
so, and she was finding it necessary to trek farther and farther away, just for the fiction of privacy. What was wrong with her? Why, having done so many backpacking trips with large groups of people, was she suddenly so shy?

A hummingbird darted in front of her, hovered, then vanished. Red throat, green iridescence:
Selasphorus platycercus
. Evelyn kept a bird log and had seen too many hummingbirds to keep track of, but this was the first she’d seen in the canyon, so it warranted a notation. She stood and hitched up her shorts. The underwater rocks were slippery, and she lurched about and finally had to use her hands to crabwalk out of the water. With the sun still hot on her shoulders, she headed back to camp; although it wasn’t her intent, she glanced toward the bushes and happened to see Peter bent at the waist, his pale hips exposed.

Without warning, she thought of Julian, alone in his house, watching a ball game.

It was a complicated breakup. When it happened, Julian cried. But he said that Evelyn couldn’t give him what he wanted in life, which was a partner who wanted to be just that, a partner, someone who shared his interests and wanted to actually do things together, not someone who was satisfied to simply come home at night after a day spent pursuing separate activities. Evelyn liked to canoe; Julian liked to go to a ball game. Evelyn liked bird-watching; Julian liked reading the sports page and puttering in the garage. There was very little they liked to do together, and although he loved her, at fifty-seven, he felt there was someone out there who could offer him more companionship. Evelyn, for her part, didn’t see anything wrong with two people
who loved each other pursuing their own separate interests. In fact, she thought it showed a smothering lack of independence when other couples did everything together.

“Lots of people take separate vacations,” she argued. “It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.”

“But I don’t want to take separate vacations,” Julian said. “I want someone to go up to Ogunquit with.”

“But I’m tired of going to your family cottage.”

“Exactly,” Julian said.

In the end, she felt too proud to argue with him. If he wanted to find someone else, let him find someone else. She didn’t want to stand in his way. But she missed him. They had never moved in together—Julian owned a house in Brookline, Evelyn a flat in Cambridge—but her place seemed empty and quiet without Julian. The batteries in the remote corroded from lack of use. The sports page went straight into recycling. She stopped buying beer to have on hand. She spent way too much time perusing catalogues and eating bagged salad.

When she sent in her deposit for this trip, she contemplated reserving an extra space, on the off chance that Julian might change his mind and decide to try a river trip. But it was a big chunk of money to forfeit, and Evelyn told herself that Julian had probably already blocked out his two weeks with his family, up in Ogunquit.

Back at the campsite, the kitchen was bustling with dinner preparations.

“Can I help?” she asked Abo, who’d tied a purple bandanna around his head. He looked like a pirate, she thought, which gave her a little thrill.

“Yeah, make a cake,” he said, and tossed her a bag of cake mix. “There’s a bowl, there’s the eggs, there’s a whisk, go for it,” and Evelyn set to work, glad to have a job. She poured the mix into the bowl and added eggs and water. Why was it, she wondered, that it was always the same people helping in the kitchen every night? This was their third night, and she’d already detected a pattern: Jill would go off to do yoga; Lloyd and Ruth would lie down on their mats (although they
were to be excused, given their age and Ruth’s injured leg); Mitchell and Lena would unfold their padded camp chairs and bring out a large bottle of gin. (“Say,” she heard Mitchell ask each night, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “got any extra limes?”)

Evelyn thought poorly of people who didn’t pitch in. From an early age, she’d been taught to look around and see what needed to be done.

“What else are we having for dinner?” she asked now.

“Ravioli,” said Abo. “Meat and/or cheese, with or without sauce, your choice. Never let it be said that we don’t offer you people a lot of options.”

“Can you believe I thought we’d be eating hot dogs and hamburgers this whole trip?” Amy said, scraping seeds out of a red pepper.

“Over my dead body,” declared Abo. “Get out of there,” he said to the dog, who was sniffing the garbage bucket.

“Speaking of dead bodies,” Peter said. “How many times have you flipped? Be honest.”

Abo tipped his head back and roared with laughter, then suddenly went solemn. “Three.”

“Dixie?”

Dixie, tending the battered fire pan, sat back on her heels, which were gray and leathery and riddled with cracks. “There are two types of river guides, Peter,” she said. “Those who’ve flipped, and those who will.”

“Which are you?”

“You’ll have to figure that out yourself,” she said. “Evelyn, you ready with the batter?”

Evelyn knelt beside Dixie and tilted the mixing bowl so Dixie could scrape the cake batter into the great iron Dutch oven.

“I’d like to flip, just to see what everyone’s talking about,” Amy said.

“Ride with Abo,” said Dixie with a grunt as she hoisted the Dutch oven over the bed of coals. Evelyn offered to wash the bowl.

“Leave it for Abo,” said Dixie.

“Leave it for JT, you mean,” said Abo.

Who at that moment came over lugging a full jug of water.

“I’m taking a survey,” Peter said. “How many times have
you
flipped?”

JT set the jug on the drink table. The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Why’re you asking?”

“I’m trying to figure out the safest boat to ride in.”

“Not mine,” said Dixie.

“Or mine,” said Abo.

“Definitely not mine,” said JT.

They were all joking, and Evelyn knew that, but joking was one thing she had never been very good at. She wished right now that she could say something that would make them all laugh, and admire her, and want to ride with her tomorrow.

“How do you tell when ravioli is done?” Abo said, poking a long spoon into the pot.

“When they float,” said Amy.

“Oh,” said Abo. “Okay. DINNER!”

Amy scraped the pile of red peppers into Peter’s salad. They faced one another, beaming, and high-fived.

“WASH YOUR HANDS!” Abo yelled.

Evelyn stood in line and hugged a plate to her chest.

“My oh my,” said Lloyd, peering into the pot.

“Get in line, Lloyd,” said Ruth.

“Where have you been?” Mark asked Jill, who had rejoined the group.

“Talking with Susan.”

“You look very rested,” said Mark.

“I am,” said Jill. “Oh Evelyn, I’m sorry, were you in line?”

Evelyn didn’t understand how it could appear that she might
not
be in line. She told Jill to go ahead, but Jill insisted Evelyn go first, so Evelyn picked up a plate and made her way through the food line. Her shoulders ached from paddling, and as she carried her plate across the sand, she thought of Julian, who kept a set of weights in front of his television set. She should buy a set of weights.

Suddenly famished, she sat down in a central spot and waited for others to join her.

That evening the bats came out. One minute there was nothing; the next minute they swarmed down from the cliffs, fluttering in jerky loops. The air seemed hotter than it had during the day, a phenomenon that Mitchell claimed made no sense but which JT knew could easily happen on a midsummer evening.

Already he could sense the water levels rising for the night; even though the surge from the dam wouldn’t come until after eleven or so, the waves seemed to lap more hungrily at the shoreline. They were camped right below Saddle Canyon, at River Mile 47, and before turning in for the night, he enlisted the help of Abo and Dixie to move the kitchen back a few feet, just to be safe.

He was tired but sensed he wouldn’t sleep much tonight. He couldn’t have said just why. Maybe because of the heat; maybe because of Ruth’s leg, which wasn’t looking any better when he rebandaged it that night. Then too there was the dog, who—despite a second tomato juice bath—still smelled like skunk. At least they had a better-fitting life jacket for him now.

Wearily he dried his feet, rubbed them with cream, and put on his socks. He stretched out on his sleeping pad and told himself to stop worrying so much. In the grand scheme of a river trip, one scraped shin and a skunked-up dog were minor things. They’d be fine. Letting his weight settle, he sighed deeply and closed his eyes, feeling his boat gently bobbing in the shallows, listening to the reassuring murmur of nearby voices.

Up at Glen Canyon Dam, the engineers opened the spillways, and beneath the stars the river rose.